Video Game / Achaea

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One of the more popular MUDs on the internet (which still makes it a shrimp compared to World of Warcraft), Achaea, Dreams of Divine Lands is an RP-enforced game that generates revenue via its pay-for-perks system. With enough money, you, too, are capable of trying to Bribe Your Way to Victory, only to discover it isn't that easy after all.

Achaea is notable for having a fairly complex combat system, and each of the various classes have completely different strategies for combat. It's also known for its aforementioned pay-for-perks system. In other words, if you want to become a strong combatant, expect to spend as much effort and possibly pay as much money as you did on your college education.

Before 2005 there was a guilds system in the game. To gain a class, you'd have to join the guild for that class, but it wouldn't stay permanent (you'd lose your class if you quit the guild or were kicked out) until you reached a high enough rank in the guild. In 2005 this was abolished in favor of "autoclass" which skipped the entire guild requirements and let someone join a class immediately. Depending on who you ask, this either destroyed the very core of the game, or was a vast improvement. An almost surefire way to start Internet Backdraft is to head to their forums and start a thread talking about how much autoclass rocks.

Iron Realms Entertainment, which makes Achaea, has three other games (Aetolia, Imperian, Lusternia), with the same game engine. They also all are pay-for-perks and have a fairly complicated political and combat system. Which means that if you spend a lot of money and/or time on one and decide to play another, all your hard work went down the drain and you have to start from scratch and do it all over again!

An Adventurer Is You: To the point that a large amount of the in game history are just the actions of really old PCs. One recently added quest explains some of the history of the major towns in the game; almost every name mentioned in the multiple spiels given to you has an Honours note A command which summarizes the age of, class of, and everything done by a player entry.

Asskicking Equals Authority: In game, it's very common for players which are skilled at the incredibly complex combat system to be prime candidates for political positions. This is more marked in the more recent IRE games.

Body Horror: Transmogrifying into a Chaos Lord has some... cosmetic side effects.

Bribing Your Way to Victory: While you can enjoy the game and acquire anything in the game world without paying money for their virtual "credits," while you do so the rich kid will surpass you nigh-instantaneously, acquiring in days what it could take you years to gather.

Go Mad from the Revelation: A powerful but tricky-to-use Occultist ability, Enlighten, essentially does this, with the effect that the enlightened character is unable to cure mental afflictions for a considerable period of time or until they die; due to how weakened they would be if this ability was successfully used on them, it's usually the latter that cures it. If you're playing and you see someone shout something about "No! It can't be true!", that usually means they just got Enlightened.

Guide Dang It: Some of the quests; the fact the game administrators strongly discourage the sharing of quest information does not help. The most infamous is the Caer Witrin quest, which only a handful of people in the history of the game have ever completed.

Item Crafting: The knight classes can, if they're skilled enough in the Forging skill and have the required materials, create weapons and armor for either themselves or to sell to others. It takes a while to make each one though, and the stats on each can be highly variable.

Mind Rape: There is an entire set of mental afflictions, and entire skillsets are centered around inflicting them. At the highest end of the scale, the Enlighten ability mentioned earlier on this list is full-fledged Mind Rape.

One-Hit Kill: Most classes have one or more of these, and they can get pretty nasty. Anyone who is good enough with a weapon can behead someone. Knights can disembowel their victims. Serpents can behead people by driving their whips through people's necks. Jesters can summon a jack-in-the-box that eats heads. Flinging the Death Tarot card at someone summons the Grim Reaper. Blademasters can slice people into bloody chunks with four well-placed slashes. Priests and Apostates can command their respective familiars to tear the soul out of someone. Apostates can also tear the heart out of their victims with their living dagger. Sylvans can plant a seed in someone that will grow inside them, eventually sprouting and shredding them from the inside out. Monks can kill using a backbreaker, but can also use their Ki Attacks to do one of two things: burn their victims to ashes or literally boil their blood. Voyria, a venom, causes spasms so great it breaks backs if it isn't cured in time. Shamans can shrink the heads of their victims while they are still attached. The prize for most gruesome, however, goes to the people who use Necromancy, and gain the ability to slice someone's chest completely open, rip apart as many of the poor soul's innards as possible, and finally drive a bone through their exposed heart.

Occasionally averted with global events such as the unification of Apollyon, God of Suffering, and Shaitain, God of Oppression as Sartan, God of Evil (and later splitting again), and the invasion of the Vertani, among other things.

Summon Magic: Several classes have skills that include summoning and controlling loyal entities, including:

Sentinels have the Woodlore skill which allows, among other things, the summoning various woodland creatures for assistance in combat.

Occultists can use Domination to reach the Chaos Plane to negotiate pacts with its denizens who can later be summoned to the prime material plane.

Mages and Sylvans have Elementalism which, unsurprisingly, includes four elemental creatures, though only two manifest as loyal entities, the other two activating instantaneous abilities.

Apostates can summon a Balzadeen in Apostasy, Priests a guardian angel with Devotion.

The knight classes get loyal falcons in the Chivalry skill, which must be acquired but are later treated like summon entities.

Sympathetic Magic: A key component of the Shaman skillset, Curses, Vodun, and Runelore, and once upon a time the Ritualism practiced by the Guild of Shamans as an immersive RP tool. Also invoked through Runelore with the Runewarden class and Puppetry in the Jester class.

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